


Apres Moi, le Deluge

by voodoochild



Category: Carnivale
Genre: Children, Future Fic, Gen, Introspection, Religious Conflict, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-30
Updated: 2011-10-30
Packaged: 2017-10-25 02:38:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/270814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/pseuds/voodoochild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sofie muses on being the Omega, the final battle, and the one thing that was worth it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apres Moi, le Deluge

**Author's Note:**

> Written for **takethewords** for the [Nostalgia Fest 2011"](http://hazyflights.livejournal.com/241856.html). Title is French, "after me, the flood". Spoilers for the entire series.

_I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty._ \- Revelation 1:8, King James Bible.

She remembers her old life in bits and pieces, but not in memories. That's not how she is anymore. She sees probabilities tested and then discarded - _draw out the tease to time it just right and Jonesy and Libby are both betrayed and pushed into alignment, stay just silent enough and just ignorant enough and Iris will keep her peace_ \- and she sees certainties that cannot be changed - _"no", Jonesy pleads, "Sofie, no", but she has to shoot him._

Her mother had seen the future and tried to kill her rather than let her fulfill her destiny. Sofie forgives her, because she is no longer a daughter, a girl, but a tool of fate. That's what the Omega is, the balance between the Light and Dark. They balance each other out, because Justin kills and Ben heals, but what Sofie can do is beyond any of that.

Balance. It's all about balance, and even she is bound to that limit. The first day, the one where she was blind with power and would have done anything to fill her role, was a deluge of will-should-must. Jonesy had to be shot so he couldn't take her back to the Carnivale; her father was too weak, almost dead, he had to be saved for Alamagordo; she had to leave Ben be, he was weakened and would learn cunning, cutting all the naivete out of him along the way to Trinity.

Sofie can see everything now, more clearly than the cards or Mama ever showed her. Past, present, future, all in a stream behind her eyes, and so, so clearly.

There is still one blind spot to her (as there must be, because even the Omega must have a balance, a safeguard), and that is her ever-vigilant, ever-cunning aunt. Iris Crowe is the daughter of Lucius Belyakov and the sister of Justin Crowe, containing within her Light and Dark, just as Sofie does. Iris's power is tainted, yes, love of Justin and Vectori madness diluting it, but still strong enough to confound Sofie.

If Sofie is the flood that will wash the earth clean - free from Light and Dark, free of Wonder and traded for Reason - Iris is the levee that will contain her.

Trinity can happen no other way. It has been set in motion by Justin's destruction, it will be wrought by Sofie and controlled by Iris, and ultimately, humanity will be saved by Ben. But there can be no ending without a beginning. That is what Michael is for - a son of Light and Dark, a new beginning, a Prophet who will never have a House.

He will have a father who sacrifices everything, and he will have a mother who will turn her back on her duty in the name of love. He will be tempted into damnation by the Usher, but taught the road to salvation by a Vectorus. He will have as divine a heritage possible, but he will never wield any of that power. He will be as ordinary as possible, a storyteller, writer of fictions that only a bare few living will know as truth.

Sofie will never see her son grow into manhood, for that is the price of being the Omega. She is only an ending, a culmination of thousands of blood-soaked years of human history. She is damned as thoroughly as any of them.

She loves Michael anyway.


End file.
